Tice Supplee, director of bird conservation, Audubon Arizona, and Grand Canyon Superintendant Dave Uberuaga celebrate the park's designation as an Important Bird Area of Global Significance/Jennie MacFarland
When it comes to the preservation of threatened and endangered bird species, it's safe to say that there's no such thing as too many layers of protection. Just because the habitat of a declining bird falls within the borders of a national park doesn't mean that bird's best interests will always be served. In most cases it will, but it never hurts to have that extra recognition.
That's why September 13th was such a special day in Grand Canyon National Park. The park was officially dedicated as an Important Bird Area of Global Significance. The assessment was made last year, but last month's ceremony made it official with park Superintendent Dave Uberuaga joining representatives from Audubon Arizona and the Tucson Audubon Society who helped make the designation possible.
Also present were the real stars of the dedication, the California Condors. After becoming extinct in the wild a quarter-century ago, condors have been reintroduced to several locations in the Southwest, including Pinnacles National Park, Grand Canyon National Park. and an area near Vermillion Cliffs National Monument. Since then, Zion National Park has also gotten in on the fun as a pair of condors have nested there, and on rare occasions condors have been seen at Bryce Canyon National Park. There are fewer than 450 California Condors alive today, with just over half of them in the wild. At last count, 73 birds were flying free in northern Arizona and southern Utah, with several nest sites in the Grand Canyon and at least one at Zion.
Two other birds also contribute to the Global IBA designation for Grand Canyon. The threatened Mexican Spotted Owl has had at least 30 nesting sites in the canyon identified by park biologists. The Pinyon Jay, also considered a threatened bird, is the third bird that met the criteria for global recognition. Pinyon Jays are sparsely distributed throughout the West, moving nomadically in flocks in response to fluctuations in pinyon seed crops. Citizen scientists using eBird helped map the movement of Pinyon Jay flocks in and around Grand Canyon National Park, contributing valuable data to the IBA assessment.
While far less important to conservation, another red-letter day happened for the California Condor last month in the realm of birding as a sport. The American Birding Association has considered California Condors 'uncountable' on official ABA lists since the last individuals were removed from the wild in 1987. An individual birder was free to list condors on his personal life list, but not on any lists submitted to the ABA for Big Year or lifetime competitions. Now, the ABA's Recording Standards and Ethics Committee has issued updated rules, which included this important section:
RULE 2.B.(vi) an individual of a reintroduced indigenous species may be counted if it is part of a population that has successfully hatched young in the wild or when it is not possible to reasonable separate the reintroduced from a wild born individual.
Since California Condors have hatched young in the wild, they are now officially countable, making September of 2014 a spectacular year for Grand Canyon National Park, California Condors, and competitive birders across North America.
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